From Capetown to Ladysmith Part 6

Every officer who showed got a round of shrapnel at him. Their riflemen would follow an officer about all day with shots at 2200 yards; the day before they had hit Major Grant, of the Intelligence, as he was sketching the country. Tommy, on the other hand, could swagger along the sky-line unmolested. No doubt the Boers thought that exposed Caesar's Camp lay within their hands.

But they were very wrong. Snug behind their _schanzes_, the Manchesters cared as much for sh.e.l.ls as for b.u.t.terflies. Most of them were posted on the inner edge of the flat top with a quarter of a mile of naked veldt to fire across. They had been reinforced the day before by a field battery and a squadron and a half of the Light Horse. And they had one _schanze_ on the outer edge of the hill as an advanced post.

In the dim of dawn, the officer in charge of this post saw the Boers creeping down behind a stone wall to the left, gathering in the bottom, advancing in, for them, close order. He welted them with rifle-fire: they scattered and scurried back.

The guns got to work, silenced the field-guns on Flat Top Hill, and added scatter and scurry to the a.s.sailing riflemen. Certainly some number were killed; half-a-dozen bodies, they said, lay in the open all day; lanterns moved to and fro among the rocks and bushes all night; a new field hospital and graveyard were opened next day at Bester's Station. On the other horn of our position the Devons had a brisk morning. They had in most places at least a mile of clear ground in front of them. But beyond that, and approaching within a few hundred yards of the extreme horn of the position, is scrub, which ought to have been cut down.

Out of this scrub the enemy began to snipe. We had there, tucked into folds of the hills, a couple of tubby old black-powdered howitzers, and they let fly three rounds which should have been very effective. But the black powder gave away their position in a moment, and from every side--Pepworth's, Lombard's Nek, Bulwan--came spouting inquirers to see who made that noise. The Lord Mayor's show was a fool to that display of infernal fireworks. The pompon added his bark, but he has never yet bitten anybody: him the Devons despise, and have christened with a coa.r.s.e name. They weathered the storm without a man touched.

Not a point had the Boers gained. And then came twelve o'clock, and, if the Boers had fixed the date of the 9th of November, so had we. We had it in mind whose birthday it was. A trumpet-major went forth, and presently, golden-tongued, rang out, "G.o.d bless the Prince of Wales."

The general up at Cove Redoubt led the cheers. The sailors' champagne, like their sh.e.l.ls, is being saved for Christmas, but there was no stint of it to drink the Prince's health withal. And then the Royal salute--bang on bang on bang--twenty-one shotted guns, as quick as the quickfirer can fire, plump into the enemy.

That finished it. What with the guns and the cheering, each Boer commando must have thought the next was pounded to mincemeat. The rifle-fire dropped.

The devil had driven home all his tin-tacks, and for the rest of the day we had calm.

XIII.

A DIARY OF DULNESS.

THE MYTHOPOEIC FACULTY--A MISERABLE DAY--THE VOICE OF THE POMPOM--LEARNING THE BOER GAME--THE END OF FIDDLING JIMMY--MELINITE AT CLOSE QUARTERS--A LAKE OF MUD.

_Nov. 11._--Ugh! What a day! Dull, cold, dank, and misty--the spit of an 11th of November at home. Not even a sh.e.l.l from Long Tom to liven it.

The High Street looks doubly dead; only a sodden orderly plashes up its spreading emptiness on a sodden horse. The roads are like rice-pudding already, and the paths like treacle. Ugh! Outside the hotel drip the usual loafers with the usual fables. Yesterday, I hear, the Leicesters enticed the enemy to parade across their front at 410 yards; each man emptied his magazine, and the smarter got in a round or two of independent firing besides. Then they went out and counted the corpses--230. It is certainly true: the narrator had it from a man who was drinking a whisky, while a private of the regiment, who was not there himself, but had it from a friend, told the barman.

The Helpmakaar road is as safe as Regent Street to-day: a curtain of weeping cloud veils it from the haunting gunners on Bulwan. Up in the schanzes the men huddle under waterproof sheets to escape the pitiless drizzle. Only one sentry stands up in long black overcoat and grey woollen nightcap pulled down over his ears, and peers out towards Lombard's Kop. This position is safe enough with the bare green field of fire before it, and the st.u.r.dy, sh.e.l.l-hardened soldiers behind.

But Lord, O poor Tommy! His waterproof sheet is spread out, mud-slimed, over the top of the wall of stone and earth and sandbag, and pegged down inside the schanz. He crouches at the base of the wall, in a miry hole.

Nothing can keep out this film of water. He sops and sneezes, runs at the eyes and nose, half manful, half miserable. He is earning the s.h.i.+lling a-day.

At lunch-time they began to sh.e.l.l us a bit, and it was almost a relief.

At anyrate it was something to see and listen to. They were dead-off Mulberry Grove to-day, but they dotted a line of sh.e.l.ls elegantly down the High Street. The bag was unusually good--a couple of mules and a cart, a tennis-lawn, and a water-tank. Towards evening the voice of the pompom was heard in the land; but he bagged nothing--never does.

_Nov. 12._--Sunday, and the few rifle-shots, but in the main the usual calm. The sky is neither obscured by clouds nor streaked with sh.e.l.ls. I note that the Sunday population of Ladysmith, unlike that of the City of London, is double and treble that of week-days.

Long Tom chipped a corner off the church yesterday; to-day the archdeacon preached a sermon pointing out that we are the heaven-appointed instrument to scourge the Boers. Very sound, but perhaps a thought premature.

_Nov. 13._--Laid three sovs. to one with the 'Graphic' yesterday against to-day being the most eventful of the siege. He dragged me out of bed in aching cold at four, to see the events.

At daybreak Observation Hill and King's Post were being sh.e.l.led and sh.e.l.ling back. Half battalions of the 1st, 60th, and Rifle Brigade take day and day about on Observation Hill and King's Post, which is the continuation of Cove Redoubts. To-day the 60th were on Leicester Post.

When sh.e.l.ls came over them they merely laughed. One ring sh.e.l.l burst, fizzing inside a schanz, with a steamy curly tail, and splinters that wailed a quarter of a mile on to the road below us; the men only raced to pick up the pieces.

When this siege is over this force ought to be the best fighting men in the world. We are learning lessons every day from the Boer. We are getting to know his game, and learning to play it ourselves.

Our infantry are already nearly as patient and cunning as he; nothing but being shot at will ever teach men the art of using cover, but they get plenty of that nowadays.

Another lesson is the use of very, very thin firing-lines of good shots, with the supports snugly concealed: the other day fourteen men of the Manchesters repulsed 200 Boers. The gunners have momentarily thrown over their first commandment and cheerfully split up batteries. They also lie beneath the schanzes and let the enemy bombard the dumb guns if he will--till the moment comes to fire; that moment you need never be afraid that the R.A. will be anywhere but with the guns.

The enemy's sh.e.l.l and long-range rifle-fire dropped at half-past six.

The guns had breached a new epaulement on Thornhill's Kop--to the left of Surprise Hill and a few hundred yards nearer--and perhaps knocked over a Boer or two,--perhaps not. None of our people hurt, and a good appet.i.te for breakfast.

In the afternoon one of our guns on Caesar's Camp smashed a pompom.

Fiddling Jimmy has been waved away, it seems. The Manchesters are cosy behind the best built schanzes in the environs of Ladysmith. Above the wall they have a double course of sandbags--the lower placed endwise across the stone, the upper lengthwise, which forms a series of loopholes at the height of a man's shoulder.

The subaltern in command sits on the highest rock inside; the men sit and lie about him, sleeping, smoking, reading, sewing, knitting. It might almost be a Dorcas meeting.

I won the bet.

_Nov. 14._--The liveliest day's bombardment yet.

A party of officers who live in the main street were waiting for breakfast. The new president, in the next room, was just swearing at the servants for being late, when a sh.e.l.l came in at the foot of the outside wall and burst under the breakfast-room. The whole place was dust and thunder and the half-acrid, half-fat, all-sickly smell of melinite. Half the floor was chips; one plank was hurled up and stuck in the ceiling.

All the crockery was smashed, and the clock thrown down; the pictures on the wall continued to survey the scene through unbroken gla.s.ses.

Much the same thing happened later in the day to the smoking-room of the Royal Hotel. It also was inhabited the minute before, would have been inhabited the minute after, but just then was quite empty. We had a cheerful lunch, as there were guns returning from a reconnaissance, and they have adopted a thoughtless habit of coming home past our house.

Briefly, from six till two you would have said that the earth was being s.h.i.+vered to matchwood and fine powder. But, alas! man accustoms himself so quickly to all things, that a bombardment to us, unless stones actually tinkle on the roof, is now as an egg without salt.

The said reconnaissance I did not attend, knowing exactly what it would be. I mounted a hill, to get warm and to make sure, and it was exactly what I knew it would be. Our guns fired at the Boer guns till they were silent; and then the Boer dismounted men fired at our dismounted men; then we came home. We had one wounded, but they say they discovered the Boer strength on Bluebank, outside Range Post, to be 500 or 600. I doubt if it is as much; but, in any case, I think two men and a boy could have found out all that three batteries and three regiments did. With a little dash, they could have taken the Boer guns on Bluebank; but of dash there was not even a little.

_Nov. 15._--I wake at 12.25 this morning, apparently dreaming of sh.e.l.l-fire.

"Fool," says I to myself, and turn over, when--swish-h! pop-p!--by the piper, it is sh.e.l.l-fire! Thud--thud--thud--ten or a dozen, I should say, counting the ones that woke me. What in the name of gunpowder is it all about? But there is no rifle-fire that I can hear, and there are no more sh.e.l.ls now: I sleep again.

In the morning they asked the Director of Military Intelligence what the sh.e.l.ling was; he replied, "What sh.e.l.ling?" n.o.body knew what it was, and n.o.body knows yet. They had a pretty fable that the Boers, in a false alarm, fired on each other: if they did, it was very lucky for them that the sh.e.l.ls all hit Ladysmith. My own notion is that they only did it to annoy--in which they failed. They were reported in the morning, as usual, searching for bodies with white flags; but I think that is their way of reconnoitring. Exhausted with this effort, the Boers--heigho!--did nothing all day. Level downpour all the afternoon, and Ladysmith a lake of mud.

_Nov. 16._--Five civilians and two natives. .h.i.t by a shrapnel at the railway station; a railway guard and a native died. Languid sh.e.l.ling during morning.

_Nov. 17._--During morning, languid sh.e.l.ling. Afternoon, raining--Ladysmith wallowing deeper than ever.

And that--heigh-h-ho!--makes a week of it. Relieve us, in Heaven's name, good countrymen, or we die of dulness!

XIV.

NEARING THE END.

DULNESS INTERMINABLE--LADYSMITH IN 2099 A.D.--SIEGES OBSOLETE HARDs.h.i.+PS--DEAD TO THE WORLD--THE APPALLING FEATURES OF A BOMBARDMENT.

_November 26, 1899._

I was going to give you another dose of the dull diary. But I haven't the heart. It would weary you, and I cannot say how horribly it would weary me.

I am sick of it. Everybody is sick of it. They said the force which would open the line and set us going against the enemy would begin to land at Durban on the 11th, and get into touch with us by the 16th. Now it is the 26th; the force, they tell us, has landed, and is somewhere on the line between Maritzburg and Estcourt; but of advance not a sign.